Page 11 of The Shattered Rite (The Sightless Prophecy Trilogy #1)

“You are not a man, Malric. You are a blade I keep sheathed until it’s time to bleed the world.” —The Sovereign of Vireth

M alric crouched in the stonework high above the Hall of Holding, swallowed by a sliver of shadow between two forgotten arches where the air stank faintly of stone dust and old blood.

The silence here was absolute. Heavy.

Perfect.

No one ever looked up.

That was their first mistake.

He was the patient sickness in the mortar, the quiet in the corner before the knife slid home. From here, he had already watched four die—two by monster, two by his hand—and not a single whisper had followed them into the dark. The trials were cruel by design. He simply made them efficient.

The order had been clear enough:

“Cull the strong. Let the monsters take the credit. Make it look like the trials are working.”

Easy. Predictable.

Until she walked in.

She came through the yawning stairwell like a ghost dredged from ash and flame.

Armor gone, burned to ruin. Only shreds of cloth remained, curling at the edges from heat, sliding against skin marked with something alive.

The black shapes weren’t ink—they moved, glinting like molten glass beneath her skin, shifting when she breathed.

They coiled over her throat, kissed her collarbones, and dove beneath the pendant that glowed at her sternum with the slow, steady pulse of another heartbeat.

His hands itched. Not to kill her. To touch .

To find where that strange heat began.

She was built of tension and survival, her red hair wild as if the fire hadn’t wanted to let go. Soot crowned her like something ceremonial. And her eyes—sightless in one sense, yet burning with an awareness that made his skin crawl—sought not what was there, but what was hidden.

He remembered those eyes.

The village.

The night she’d stepped out of her cabin in ill-fitting armor, grief sharp as the smell of iron on her skin. She’d looked right at him—not with challenge, but with… acceptance. As if she’d already measured the weight of danger and decided to carry it anyway.

Now she carried something else, too.

The bond.

It didn’t just cling to her—it claimed her. And gods help him, it made her worse .

Sharper. More dangerous. More herself .

She didn’t move like the others, bowed by fear or exhaustion. She moved like judgment—unhurried, unrelenting, as though the ground should be grateful she walked on it.

The king wanted her broken last. Wanted her to suffer.

Malric… wasn’t sure what he wanted.

Around her, the others reacted like she was a storm crawling into human skin. One man whispered a prayer. Another stared as though she was a god that had noticed him.

And then her chin lifted.

Just enough.

Enough to make every muscle in him go still.

He was hidden—silent, masked by charm and stone. No one ever sensed him unless he allowed it. But she… she tilted her head like a hound catching a scent.

Her fingers brushed the pendant, the glow flaring just enough to make him feel watched. Not by her eyes. By something else.

Malric eased further back into the shadow, though his pulse did not slow.

This was the girl he’d been ordered to kill.

The Dragonrider.

The ruler’s words hissed in his mind:

“Let her be the last. Let her watch the others fall. Let her heart burn before her body does.”

His blade was steady in its sheath.

But the thought of driving it into her made something in him recoil.

Worse—he realized he didn’t want her dead at all.

And that meant one thing.

He wasn’t here to hunt her anymore.

He was here to see what she would do next.

To learn how she burned.

And when the fire finally came, he didn’t know if he’d be the one to stop it—

Or feed it until it consumed them both.

His gaze tracked her as she crossed the Hall, the pendulum swing of her shadow stretching across the flagstones like a blade being drawn.

Every step she took echoed in his bones.

He’d been sent here to be her ending.

And yet—watching her now—he could not tell if he wanted to be her executioner…

Or the knife she chose to wield.

Somewhere deep in his chest, something shifted.

Dangerously.

The others in the Hall looked away from her; he did not.

He followed her every move, storing each detail like a thief cataloging stolen treasure. The faint tilt of her chin. The way the air seemed to thin in her wake. The ghost of heat that brushed his skin though she never came near him.

When she disappeared into the stairwell’s shadow, he stayed crouched among the stone ribs above, unmoving.

It wasn’t until long after her footsteps faded that he realized his hands had curled into fists—tight enough to ache.

This was the woman the prophecy spoke about. The one he had been ordered to break.

To burn.

To leave hollow.

He licked his teeth, the taste of iron sharp in his mouth.

If he was the fire, she was the storm.

And storms… were not so easily tamed.